An automatic packaging machine, which is commonly provided with a band guide arch for arranging a band in a looping manner around goods to be packaged, requires feeding the band as rapidly as possible for improving the packaging efficiency. A packaging machine of this type is provided with a pool box 30 for pooling or accumulating therein the band fed to the arch, because a band coil loaded with a large amount of the band is very heavy, and because it is difficult to remove the band from a band reel loaded with the band coil through a pair of feed rollers and then to feed the band to the arch directly.
The automatic packaging machine provided with the pool box is required to grasp the band removed from the band reel, prior to the packaging operation, between a pair of band-feeding feed rollers. The rollers feed the band through the pool box, a band-tightening mechanism and other instruments and, simultaneously, pre-pool the band in the pool box for facilitating to eventual feeding of the band to the arch and various means for performing such a series of operations have hereto been proposed.